Volume III Part 29 (2/2)
Hoffman's political career closed under circ.u.mstances that a more heroic soul might have avoided. In his last message he had repudiated the Ring. He had also made some atonement by authorising such suits against it as Charles O'Conor might advise,[1400] and by vetoing the Code Amendment Bill, devised by Cardozo and designed to confer authority upon the judges to punish the press for attacking the Ring; but the facts inspiring Nast's cartoon, which pictured him as the Tammany wooden Indian on wheels, pushed and pulled by the Erie and Tweed combination, had fixed the Governor in the popular mind as the blind tool of rings. ”I saw him in 1885,” says Rhodes, ”at the Schweizerhof in Lucerne. Accompanied by his wife he was driving through Switzerland; and in this hotel, full of his own countrymen, he sat neglected, probably shunned by many. The light was gone from his eyes, the vigour from his body, the confidence from his manner; consciousness of failure brooded in their stead. He had not become dissipated. Great opportunities missed; this was the memory that racked him, body and spirit, and left him nerveless and decrepit, inviting death.”[1401] He died in Germany in 1888.
[Footnote 1400: Attorney-General Champlain had publicly announced his purpose to authorise O'Conor to bring such suits before the Committee of Seventy had had its interview with the Governor.--Tilden's _Public Writings and Speeches_, Vol. 1, p. 590.]
[Footnote 1401: James F. Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol.
6, p. 401, note.]
For mayor of New York, John Kelly nominated Abram R. Lawrence, a lawyer of ability and integrity, whom the Liberals endorsed. The anti-Tammany forces, not yet willing to surrender to the new Boss, divided their strength, the Apollo Hall Democracy nominating James...o...b..ien, its founder, while the a.s.sociations centring about the Committee of Seventy supported William F. Havermeyer, whom the Republicans endorsed. Havermeyer had twice been mayor.[1402] He belonged among the enemies of jobbery, and although sixty-seven years of age his mental and physical powers remained unimpaired. The contest, thus narrowed to Lawrence and Havermeyer, a.s.sured a good mayor.
[Footnote 1402: Elected in 1844 and 1847. Declined a renomination in 1849.]
The campaign opened encouragingly for Democrats and Liberals. ”The antagonisms which civil war has created between the kindred populations of our country,” declared Tilden, in his speech at the Syracuse convention, ”must be closed up now and forever.”[1403] This was the keynote of his party, and, apart from the personal question of candidates, was the only serious issue of the campaign. In his letter of acceptance Greeley added a new phrase to the vocabulary of the common people: ”I accept your nomination,” he said, ”in the confident trust that the ma.s.ses of our countrymen North and South are eager to clasp hands across the b.l.o.o.d.y chasm.”[1404]
[Footnote 1403: New York _Tribune_, September 5, 1872.]
[Footnote 1404: _Ibid._, May 22, 1872.]
This was a taking cry, and as the great editor moved across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, the general demonstration of interest created considerable uneasiness at Republican headquarters. ”His name had been honoured for so many years in every Republican household,”
says Blaine, ”that the desire to see and hear him was universal, and secured to him the majesty of numbers at every meeting.”[1405]
Greeley's friends interpreted these vast audiences as indications of a great tidal wave which would sweep Grant and his party from power. In the latter part of September they confidently counted upon carrying the October States. The South's endors.e.m.e.nt of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, its declaration that the public credit must be sacredly maintained, and its denunciation of repudiation in every form and guise, created the belief that the North and South would, indeed, ”clasp hands across the b.l.o.o.d.y chasm.”
[Footnote 1405: _Twenty Years in Congress_, Vol. 2, p. 534.]
In New York, however, although the Democratic leaders stood loyally by their candidate, pus.h.i.+ng Kernan boldly to the front wherever Greeley seemed weak, the inequality of the fight was apparent. Tammany and old-time Democrats could not forget that the _Tribune's_ editor had cla.s.sed them with blacklegs, thieves, burglars, gamblers, and keepers of dens of prost.i.tution.[1406] Moreover, only three Republican newspapers had declared for Greeley,[1407] while many leaders like Lyman Tremaine and James W. Husted, whose criticism of the President had encouraged the belief that they would favour the Cincinnati nominee, preferred Grant.[1408] Besides, the business men of the country thought the Republican party without Greeley safer than the Democratic party with Greeley.
[Footnote 1406: ”We asked our contemporary [_World_] to state frankly whether the pugilists, blacklegs, thieves, burglars, keepers of dens of prost.i.tution, etc., etc., who make up so large a share of our city's inhabitants, were not almost unanimously Democrats.”--_Tribune_, January 4, 1868.
”So every one who chooses to live by pugilism, or gambling, or harlotry, with nearly every keeper of a tippling house, is politically a Democrat.... A purely selfish interest attaches the lewd, ruffianly, criminal and dangerous cla.s.s to the Democratic party by the instinct of self-preservation.”--_Ibid._, January 7. Conkling quoted these extracts in his Cooper Inst.i.tute speech of July 23.--New York _Times_, July 24, 1872.]
[Footnote 1407: New York _Tribune_, Syracuse _Herald_, and Watertown _Times_.]
[Footnote 1408: New York _Tribune_, August 22.]
After the Cincinnati convention a Republican Congress pa.s.sed a General Amnesty Act, approved May 22, and in the interest of ”a free breakfast table” placed tea and coffee on the free list. The reduction of the public debt at the rate of one hundred millions a year, as well as large annual reductions in the rate of taxation, also inspired confidence, while to the President and his Secretary of State belonged great credit for the Geneva arbitration. This amicable and dignified adjustment of differences between England and the United States, leading to new rules for the future government of Anglo-American relations, and making impossible other than a friendly rivalry between the two nations, sent a thrill of satisfaction through the American people. Until then the settlement of such irritating questions had not come by the peaceful process of law.
As the campaign progressed both sides indulged in bitter personalities. In his Cooper Inst.i.tute speech, an address of great power, Conkling's invective and sarcasm cut as deeply as Nast's cartoons.[1409] Greeley's face, dress, and manners readily lent themselves to caricature. ”I have been a.s.sailed so bitterly,” wrote Greeley, ”that I hardly knew whether I was running for President or the Penitentiary.”[1410] The _Tribune_ told of a negro woman who was heard cursing him in the streets of an Ohio river town because he had ”sold her baby down South before the war.”[1411] Grant did not escape.
Indeed, he was lampooned until he declared that ”I have been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equalled in political history.”[1412]
[Footnote 1409: New York _Times_, July 24. ”The longest and greatest campaign speech of his life.”--Alfred R. Conkling, _Life of Conkling_, p. 436.]
[Footnote 1410: Hollister's _Life of Colfax_, p. 387, note.]
[Footnote 1411: The same article enumerates some of the charges published against him: ”In Was.h.i.+ngton he was a briber. In Albany he was the head of the lobby. In New York he was a partner in the Ring frauds. He defended the rascalities of Tweed. He sold the influence of his paper to Tammany Hall. He intrigued to restore the thieves to power. He was involved in schemes for robbing the national treasury.
He was plotting the payment of the Confederate debt. He had promised pensions to Rebel soldiers. He was an original Secessionist. He was once a slave-trader in Memphis. He was the friend of the Ku-Klux and ballot-box stuffers.... Dix blamed him for expressing ten or twelve years ago sentiments identical with those of Dix himself.”--New York _Tribune_, November 22, 1872.]
[Footnote 1412: _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, Richardson, Vol. 7, p. 223.]
Early elections increased Republican confidence. North Carolina, then a doubtful State, gave a Republican majority in August.[1413] Vermont and Maine followed in September, and Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana practically settled the question in October. Finally, the election on November 5 gave Greeley, by small majorities, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas, or sixty-six electoral votes to two hundred and seventy-two for Grant, whose popular majority exceeded three-quarters of a million. Dix carried New York by 55,451 majority.[1414] Of thirty-two congressmen the Republicans elected twenty-three, with a legislative majority of seventy on joint ballot.
<script>